No justice on earth until there is justice for women

Scan the headlines on any given day and you’re sure to find dozens of stories about girls and women being abused, abducted, raped, beaten and killed. The pervasive oppression of women and girls is humanity’s greatest travesty.

An Iranian woman who’d already been condemned to death faces another sentence of 99 lashes because of a case of mistaken identity in a photograph, according to foes of the execution. Iranian authorities imposed the sentence after they saw the photo of a woman without a head scarf in a newspaper, the International Committee Against Stoning, a human rights group, said Friday.

Russian women are habitually beaten with legal impunity—in a country with no support system for victims of domestic violence. So it was horrible but hardly surprising when my friend’s husband got drunk and killed her.

Only about one third of countries around the world have laws in place to combat violence against women, and in most of these countries those laws are not enforced, well resourced or taken seriously. Violence against women and girls, in the form of human trafficking, harmful cultural practices, rape as a tactic of war and domestic violence, is one of the single greatest barriers holding women back. A staggering statistic: one out of every three women will be a victim of violence in her lifetime. And the problem is getting worse every year.

Majorities in nearly all 18 sub-Saharan African countries surveyed in 2009 say rape is a major problem in their countries. A median of 77% of sub-Saharan Africans see rape as this much of a problem, but in six countries, the percentage saying this reaches 90% or higher. Gallup’s survey results reaffirm the extent to which the issue of rape plagues countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa, where nearly all (97%) call it a major problem. According to Interpol, South Africa has the highest number of declared rapes in the world, with nearly half of the victims younger than 18.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey — the country’s largest and most reliable crime study — there were 248,300 sexual assaults in 2007 (the most recent data available).

Across the globe, women’s rights, their basic dignity, is under assault. It can manifest with physical violence, but it can also be part of a pervasive pattern of sexism and misogyny. Whatever form it takes, one thing is clear: there can be no justice on earth until there is justice for women.

UPDATE: Watch this Nightline clip about gang-rape on a college campus:

Hena Akhter’s last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl.

Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh’s Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public.

Hena dropped after 70. Bloodied and bruised, she was taken to hospital, where she died a week later.

“There are basically two business models: manipulating girls through violence—that’s called ‘gorilla’ pimping—and controlling them with drugs,” says Patel, who prosecuted the case of New York–based trafficker Corey Davis, a.k.a. “Magnificent.” A high-living, highly educated pimp who kept the slave master’s manifesto The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave in his Mercedes, Davis, Patel says, made sex slaves out of, among others, a 12-year-old runaway and a university coed on a track scholarship. To force them to do his bidding, Davis allegedly sliced a girl in his “stable” with a box cutter and stomped others into submission with a special pair of Timberland boots—a technique known as “Timming.” Another female, a 15-year-old patient of Dr. Sharon Cooper’s, was zipped into a duffel bag and deposited by her pimp on a six-lane highway. The pimp of Caroline (a former Connecticut 4-H Club member) plucked out her fingernails one by one until she passed out from the pain. Natalie, an ex–Catholic schoolgirl rescued by gems, was from the age of 13 tortured or beaten with water, belts, chains, even a bag of frozen oranges. “Pimping,” Natalie says, “is not cool. A pimp is a wife beater, rapist, murderer, child-molester, drug dealer, and slave driver rolled into one.”

2 comments

William says:

02/15/2011 at 6:34 pm

I feel those who sexually assault, rape, victimize, beat, etc. the elderly, defenseless women, and children should be treated in kind. Those perpetrating these cowardly crimes deserve the worst punishment. No less than death.